'PlayStation Home' Patch Removes Voice Chat Temporarily, Adds Beards

Sony has patched PlayStation Home, which will bring the version of the Open Beta up to 1.04 from 1.03. In a blog post on the Official PlayStation Blog, Sony claimed that "the reason for this maintenance is to ease the difficulty some people are having accessing PlayStation Home due to the high demand for the service."

That's good, but there's a catch. Sony has temporarily removed the voice chat feature from Home. Text chat will still be available (and heavily censored) and they are encouraging users to use the official Wireless Keypad or a USB/Bluetooth keyboard to type.

There is a silver lining, however. Users that log back in will be able to give their avatars beards...

So, to recap: users have lost the ability to freely engage in voice chat, but can now grow virtual beards. A fair trade? I don't think so.

What do you think about the latest patch? Has it at least solved some of your connection problems?